The budget of operators’ LTE investments is being squeezed by the challenging mobile data business case. In order to make economic sense, the cost of rolling out an LTE network cannot be more than a fraction of the money that has been spent on 3G rollouts. Moreover, the price of incremental capacity upgrades needs to be at least ten times lower than the typical price of adding comparable capacity to HSPA networks.

The Canadian wireless market is ruled by provincial mobile network duopolies and monopolies. While in some provinces regional operators increasingly challenge the incumbents, at the national level, Canada is a de-facto network duopoly.

In June 2018 Elisa became the first operator in the world to launch commercial service over its 5G (3.5 GHz) network in Tampere Finland and Tallinn Estonia. Elisa invited Rewheel to try its 5G network.